Blair Witch Watch 2016: Knifesex

Welcome back to the hottest hot news of 2016: Blair Witch Watch. We’re just a week out from Blair Witch, the only movie I’ve ever wanted to see more than the OG The Blair Witch Project.

I recently spoke to Josh Strawn of Azar Swan about the impact The Blair Witch Project had on horror films, and it got me thinking about what impact the film had on other loved ones in my life, so i turned to (Borat voice) my wife.

Vanessa Irena, aka knifesex, who also happens to have a side-job as being both my wife and Mr Frito Burrito’s mom, doesn’t so much have a history of being a huge horror film fanatic, but has an incredibly compelling history with the original film nonetheless, so I’ve asked her to recount it here. (Also, full disclosure, Vanessa and I are starting a night called New Jack WITCH next month that should appeal to anyone reading this.)

“I saw the Blair Witch Project in the theaters in 1999, and while I don’t remember much about the experience besides being totally freaked out, I knew it was unlike anything I had ever seen and the start of something really big and exciting. Thanks to my horror-obsessed husband, in the past year or so I’ve been on a steady diet of the good, the bad, and the ugly of found footage horror with no regrets. It wasn’t until we re-watched Blair Witch last weekend (for me the first time in 17 years) that I was able to connect my obsession with the genre to a long recurring thread in my life that traces back as long as I can remember.

I grew up reading detective stories. My dad was huge Sherlock Holmes fan and as a kid my heroes were Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown. I was an arty teen and ended up studying painting in college. One of my thesis advisors was a brilliant photographer who introduced me to the work of Sophie Calle whose work completely blew my mind. She was the first artist I had encountered that was using photography as a tool for performance as opposed to just documentation, and her case the performance centered around the concept of identity and more specifically, voyeurism. In one project, she took a a job as a housekeeper in a motel, and would photograph the belongings of the guests and pair them with stories she made up about them based around what she thought their possessions said about who they were. In another, she found the address book of a man on the street and contacted everyone in the book and asked them their opinion of the man. She also turned the lens on herself by hiring a private detective to follow her around for the day and to take detailed notes and photographs of her movement, while remaining unseen to her. Despite the EXTREMELY QUESTIONABLE ethics employed in the projects (which I certainly do not condone,) my 20-year-old college brain which was primed for the existential crisis that invariably occurs around that time in one’s life basically split open. I became obsessed with the idea of defining a thing or a person by everything they are not, i.e. their relationships, their possessions, their creations, and in the case of a detective, by what they leave behind. I would later come to learn through the study of Buddhism that our only true existence is through relationship to other things, but I digress.

My second existential crises happened around the age of 26. After living through 9/11 in New York, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and a series of unfortunate moves and experiences I now refer to as “failed life experiments,” I became increasingly disillusioned with art and drawn toward hard science, which led me to a graduate program in Forensic Science. I lasted two years before the artist and musician in me realized I could never really be a chemist, but during that time I was Sophie Calle and Nancy Drew with a lab coat. What is a forensic scientist but a person who creates a story from what is left behind? Which leads me back to found footage, which is, in essence, voyeurism theater. When you watch found footage movie, you are the detective, piecing together a narrative from what remains of it’s aftermath. And though it’s all fake, so, thankfully, no actual privacy violation exists, there’s still a distinct feeling of “I’m not supposed to be watching this” and “this isn’t meant for me,” and I find that incredibly exciting. ”

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“Ratmansky’s extraordinary musical sense... wins out.”—Russia’s Kommersantwith the Kennedy Center Opera House OrchestraRomeo and Juliet“Bolshoi” means “big” in Russian—and the world-renowned company more than lives up to

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“Bolshoi” means “big” in Russian—and the world-renowned company more than lives up to its name with its latest production of Romeo and Juliet choreographed by former Artistic Director Alexei Ratmansky, one of today’s hottest, most visionary, and most in-demand dance-makers. The Bolshoi Ballet is celebrated for its daringly athletic and highly theatrical style of ballet. It’s been nearly six years since the mighty company last performed for us, and this time the Bolshoi’s incomparable stars immerse themselves in Shakespeare’s enduring tragedy of star-crossed love.

Danced to Prokofiev’s richly cinematic score, Ratmansky’s version shines with the characteristic style that audiences have come to adore from him: quick steps, vigorous lifts, and surprising dashes of humor. Leveraging the Bolshoi dancers’ dynamic range, his staging feels at once both epic and human, a sweeping spectacle that more deeply and poetically explores the young couple’s burning attraction to each other amidst the suffocating circumstances of family feuding in 14th-century Verona. When the Bolshoi tours in 2020, Washington is the only U.S. city lucky enough to host Romeo and Juliet. Don’t miss this remarkable opportunity!

Violent Femmes 10th studio album, HOTEL LAST RESORT, resides among the groundbreaking band’s finest work, simultaneously refining and redefining their one-of-a-kind take on American music, mingling front porch folk, post punk, spiritual jazz, country blues, avant garde minimalism and golden age rock ‘n’ roll into something still altogether their own. Founded and fronted of course by singer/guitarist Gordon Gano and acoustic bass guitarist Brian Ritchie, the Milwaukee-born combo remains as warm, wise and weird as ever before, with such new favorites as “Another Chorus” and “Everlasting You” continuing to mine the vast range of ideas, melodic complexity and organic sonic craftsmanship that has characterized the band’s body of work since their landmark self-titled 1983 debut.

Formed in 1977, X quickly established themselves as one of the best bands in the first wave of LA’s flourishing punk scene; becoming legendary leaders of a punk generation. Featuring vocalist Exene Cervenka, vocalist/bassist John Doe, guitarist Billy Zoom, and drummer DJ Bonebrake, their debut 45 was released on the seminal Dangerhouse label in 1978, followed by seven studio albums released from 1980-1993. Over the years, the band has released several critically acclaimed albums, topped the musical charts with regularity and performed their iconic hits on top television shows such as Letterman and American Bandstand. X’s first two studio albums, Los Angeles and Wild Gift are ranked by Rolling Stone among the top 500 greatest albums of all time. The band continues to tour with the original line-up fully intact. In 2017, the band celebrated their 40th yearanniversary in music with a Grammy Museum exhibit opening, a Proclamation from the City of Los Angeles and being honored at a Los Angeles Dodgers game where Exene threw out the first pitch and John Doe sang the National Anthem. In 2020, X celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Los Angeles.

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Today NYC-via-Seoul electronic producer, DJ, and vocalist Yaeji has announced the release of a new mixtape titled WHAT WE DREW 우리가 그려왔던, due out April 2 on XL Recordings. To

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Today NYC-via-Seoul electronic producer, DJ, and vocalist Yaeji has announced the release of a new mixtape titled WHAT WE DREW 우리가 그려왔던, due out April 2 on XL Recordings. To introduce the new project, her first full-length mixtape and release on XL, Yaeji has shared a new animated music video for the lead single “WAKING UP DOWN.” It’s also been announced that this Summer Yaeji will perform live across North America and Europe in which she’ll debut an all-new live show featuring dancers, original choreography and new stage production.

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slowthai knew the title of his album long before he wrote a single bar of it. He knew he wanted the record to speak candidly about his upbringing on the

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slowthai knew the title of his album long before he wrote a single bar of it. He knew he wanted the record to speak candidly about his upbringing on the council estates of Northampton, and for it to advocate for community in a country increasingly mired in fear and insularity. Three years since the phrase first appeared in his breakout track ‘Jiggle’, Tyron Frampton presents his incendiary debut ‘Nothing Great About Britain’.

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Ed O’Brien never planned to make a solo record. As guitarist with Radiohead, who over almost three decades and nine albums have established themselves as one of the most innovative

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Ed O’Brien never planned to make a solo record. As guitarist with Radiohead, who over almost three decades and nine albums have established themselves as one of the most innovative and influential musical forces of our time, he thought his artistic side had its outlet and was happy to spend any downtime from Radiohead with his family. Plus, he wondered, would it really be necessary? “Thom, Jonny and Phillip are making music,” he says, “and I’m like, ‘The last thing the world needs is a shit album by me.’”

But suddenly a switch was flicked and the songs came pouring out of him. That creative surge resulted in an album of rediscovery and adventure by O’Brien under the moniker EOB that deftly veers from moments of delicate folk to euphoric house, its songs seamlessly pinned together by unswerving melodic hooks and candid lyricism.

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Join LabX and the Cultural Programs at The National Academy of Sciences as they collaborate with the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center to host a hands-on activity day for families with

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Join LabX and the Cultural Programs at The National Academy of Sciences as they collaborate with the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center to host a hands-on activity day for families with young children, using the ETERNAL sculpture as a platform for engagement. Topics for the ETERNAL Family Day event will range from ocean research and conservation to consumer waste.

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This album was made from January 2015 to December 2019, starting as a collection of vague ideas that eventually turned into songs. I wanted to make something that was different

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This album was made from January 2015 to December 2019, starting as a collection of vague ideas that eventually turned into songs. I wanted to make something that was different from my previous records, and I struggled to figure out how to do that. I realized that because the way I listened to music had changed, I had to change the way I wrote music, as well. I was listening less and less to albums and more and more to individual songs, songs from all over the place, every few days finding a new one that seemed to have a special energy. I thought that if I could make an album full of songs that had a special energy, each one unique and different in its vision, then that would be a good thing.Andrew, Ethan, Seth and I started going into the studio to record songs that had more finished structures and jam on ideas that didn’t. Then I would mess with the recordings until I could see my way to a song. Most of the time on this album was spent shuttling between my house and Andrew’s, who did a lot of the mixing on this. He comes from an EDM school of mixing, so we built up sample-heavy beat-driven songs that could work to both of our strengths.

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Growing up in suburban New Jersey, 23-year-old singer, songwriter and producer Jeremy Zucker has always been surrounded by music. In 2015, he released his first EP as a freshman at

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Growing up in suburban New Jersey, 23-year-old singer, songwriter and producer Jeremy Zucker has always been surrounded by music. In 2015, he released his first EP as a freshman at Colorado College pursuing a degree in Molecular Biology, and by 2017 he had signed a major label record deal with Republic Records. Since then, he has released 4 EP’s with breakthrough singles such as “talk is overrated” featuring blackbear, “all the kids are depressed,” and his biggest song to date, the Gold-Certified hit “comethru”. Overall, Zucker has already crossed over a staggering 1 billion total streams on his catalogue as he gears up for his debut album, coming early 2020.